GE

(Note - updated with audio of meeting and video of protests taking place outside, at bottom of post.) more »

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GE paid an effective tax rate of 2.3 percent or less over the past ten years. What did the government do for GE while it was paying little - and often no - taxes? Let's see:

The government let it off with just a slap on the wrist - more than once - after it repeatedly broke the law. more »

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Celebrate Labor Day. Really, celebrate. It’s important. more »

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The nation’s greedy corporations and insatiable wealthy are fattening themselves on workers. There’s no trickle down. It’s the opposite; the rich have been sucking the economic lifeblood from the middle class for decades. more »

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In 1983 NY hotel-chain-owning billionaire Leona Helmsley said, "We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes..." As our country migrates from democracy to plutocracy, this more and more appears to be official policy. more »

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Fukushima is "a very huge disaster that has caused very large damage at a nuclear power generation plant on a scale that we had not expected," according to the deputy director general of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

But the risk of disaster was easily calculated, and an effective regulator would have demanded that the Tokyo Electric Power Company take the appropriate precautions. That didn't happen. The ugly truth, here and in Japan, is this: Unless government regains the will and the ability to regulate private industry, more catastrophes are all but inevitable.

Corporate money has come to dominate politics, so change won't come easily. Citizens will need to push for it as if their lives depended on it - because they do.

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Can a crime be committed if there is no criminal to commit it? According to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the answer to that Zen koan is apparently "yes." The SEC collected a $50 million settlement from GE Capital after concluding that the corporation "misled investors" by committing accounting and bank fraud, but then apparently decided that no individuals were responsible.

GE has been one of corporate America's worst repeat offenders, with a long history of settlements and guilty pleas. Its behavior in this case casts a spotlight on the world of "shadow banking," where institutions can behave like banks without being banks. That's another koan-like statement, and it's a very convenient one that lets them avoid a lot of oversight and regulation.

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In last week’s post, Whirlpool Bites Hands Of American Taxpayers That Feed It, I wrote about Whirlpool closing a factory in Evansville, Indiana. In summary,

• Whirlpool closes a plant in Evansville
• Taxpayers will shoulder the unemployment and other costs. more »

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International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers President Edwin D. Hill comments on the recent announcement by General Electrical Co. more »

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Jeffery Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, has led the outsourcing charge in the past. So commentators were shocked last month when, speaking at the Detroit Economic Club, Immelt said that the United States needs to invest in American manufacturing in order to get out of our current economic crisis. more »

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